skeletons don't mash potatoes
by Flashing The Floods
Summary: Lysander was subdued euphoria. Nathaniel liked him in intricate simplicity. Beyond crappy, plotless, worthless, awful attempt at fluff-ish Nathaniel/Lysander crap. Gift fic for owldistraction.


**Author's Note: Random, crappy, surprise (except it's not really a surprise anymore, 'cause I accidentally mentioned it) gift fic for owldistraction! She mentioned she liked Nathaniel/Lysander in some review and whatnot, so I guess I kinda wanted to give her some. Cause really, there's not much out there...Bleh. Sorry, owldistraction. I was trying to go for pure fluff, but I should know by now that I can't do that. I just can't do fluff to save my life. **

**Subsequently, this is all like drabble-babble, disjointed, plotless, plotless,_ plotless_ crap without any substance whatsoever. It's really shitty, so it's not much of a gift. Just some more pointless, worthless text that vaguely resembles the concept of fluff. Slightly pervy at the end, so beware of le pervyness. **

**But still. It is for you and whatnot. So like...I dunno. I hope you find it somewhat tolerable u_e'**

* * *

Nathaniel strode down the hallway, clipboard tucked under one arm and library book in the opposite hand. He was on his way to find a quiet place to read when a gentle touch on his shoulder paused him mid-stride.

He wheeled, smiling politely in greeting. "Hi Lysander. Do you need something?"

"Not exactly," he breathed and offered a smile of his own. "I just wanted to thank you for being our drummer. I never really got the chance, with all the mayhem that happened right afterward."

Mayhem was one way to put it. That whole fiasco with Debrah had certainly put a time-comsuming wrench in things. But it had its benefits. Like Castiel skipping school for, so far, four days in a row. Nathaniel found a perverse satisfaction knowing that he was probably suffering, and an even more justifiable satisfaction in the knowledge that she had gotten what she deserved for nicking his own reputation.

"That's nice, but you don't have to thank me. I had a lot of fun."

"I'm glad. Perhaps you should take drumming up as a pastime. You didn't have that long to practice, but you were still quite good."

"Oh..." Nathaniel blinked, smile falling away in bewilderment. "Well, thanks. I'm happy I didn't let you down." He smiled again as a blush crept into his cheeks, beaming at the earnest compliment, even if he couldn't follow the suggestion through.

"You're welcome." With that and a slight dip of the head, Lysander departed.

.

"I found this in the Physics room. It's yours, isn't it?" Nathaniel held out the notebook.

"Yes, thank you!" Lysander's eyes lit up and he eagerly seized it from his grasp. It was unusual to see him so blatantly animated and Nathaniel couldn't help watching.

"It's been missing for over a month! I feared I'd lost it for sure this time!" And then, as an afterthought; "I wonder how it got in there. I don't even have that class." He tenderly caressed the cover as though it were the face of a lover.

"Your guess is as good as mine," Nathaniel chuckled. It was odd to see anyone so expressive over a notebook of all things. Let alone Lysander, who was usually so unruffled.

"Thanks again." A brilliant smile of reassurance unfolded on his lips and stretched from ear to ear.

For a moment, Nathaniel didn't have any words. He couldn't look away from that smile. It was so simply blissful. Strikingly sweet. Strangely beautiful.

"You're welcome." He was blushing in front of Lysander for the second time in his life. And this time he could feel it burn all the way to the tips of his ears.

.

There wasn't anyplace in the world that smelled better than the library. The opaque aroma of ink danced with the crisp scent of paper and turned the library's very atmosphere into a perfume.

Nathaniel delighted in it every time he crossed the threshold.

Savoring it, he strolled down the aisles of books until he found one that grabbed his attention. He then sidled down to his usual reading spot (a secluded stool against a reference bookcase, that probably wasn't meant to be used as a chair at all), surprised to find that it was already being occupied. Occupied, in fact, by a familiar silver-haired classmate.

Lysander lowered his book upon being noticed and blinked up at Nathaniel in pleasant surprise. "Well hello, Nathaniel. What a coincidence seeing you here."

"Hi." For whatever reason, he was at a loss for words. The letters in his mind refused to jumble together and he was left at a blank.

"_Outcry_, hm?" Jonquil and shamrock pools curiously swept over Nathaniel's choice of reading material. "I heard it was suspenseful."

"I hope so. I haven't started it yet." The words came back and he offered Lysander a small smile, gaze shifting to the books on his lap. "And you're checking out _The Bull from the Sea_ and _The Crown of Violet_. You're a fan of Ancient Greece?"

"Not exclusively, but it certainly holds its appeal. Some of my most favorite works are Greek."

"I guess I shouldn't be surprised. They're very elegant." _Like you_, Nathaniel almost added.

"Indeed." Lysander's lips twitched up in a soft, contented smile. Nathaniel's own smile widened just to be graced with it.

"I'll let you get back to reading. See you in school." He awkwardly started to wander away.

"It was nice to see you, Nathaniel."

He slowed in stride and cast a glace back over his shoulder. An uncanny thrill ran through him when Lysander said his name. It was just a little bit sublime.

.

Obnoxious crashing and banging ripped Nathaniel from his peaceful doze. He stood abruptly from the desk and whipped his head around, looking for the source of the clamor. The last of it echoed from the direction was the gardening club.

Nathaniel frowned. School had been closed for hours now. He was the only one who stayed after this late, so what was up with all that racket? Was someone trying to break in?

He hesitated to go investigate. The gardening club was far from his favorite place. But then again, it wasn't the right time in the season for the plants that agitated his allergies to be in bloom. He'd probably be okay. And if someone was breaking in, well, that wasn't exactly something he could merely ignore.

Grabbing a chair in case he needed a weapon, Nathaniel took in a breath and silently crept to the gardening club. Broken crates of bushes and spilled soil scattered sporadically across across the ground, but there was no burglar in sight. Just a huge mess he'd have to clean up.

"Hi, Nathaniel."

The blonde jumped out of his skin and nearly dropped the chair, golden depths darting across the area. "W-Who said that!?"

"Down here." A declining crate with a lopsided barberry got pushed aside to reveal a sheepish Lysander in the dirt, sprawled on his stomach.

Putting the chair down, Nathaniel skittered over and kneeled down next to him. "Lysander? What happened? Are you alright?"

Lysander rolled over and pushed himself up on his elbows, giving Nathaniel an unsteady smile of apology. "I come here to write sometimes. I was on my way out and I tripped in a hole. I'm sure someone must've uprooted something, or was planning to plant something there. If it's the latter, I'll have to apologize for ruining it. But I'll apologize to you now for this whole mess. I fell into the stack of crates." Obviously.

"It's fine," Nathaniel reassured and patted him on the shoulder. "Really. It could happen to anybody."

"Do you suppose you could help me up?"

"Of course." Nathaniel took his hand and gently pulled him to his feet. Lysander uttered a sharp gasp as he took his own weigh, wincing. Startled pain crossed his features.

Fearing he might fall again, Nathaniel grabbed his shoulders with steadying hands "You're hurt?"

Lysander leaned into his grip, embarrassment dusting his cheeks. "I think I might've twisted my ankle." Stoic though he was, bald pain flared behind his eyes.

Nathaniel's heart thumped with a pang of sympathy. "Here, you can lean on me. I'll help you home, okay?"

"If you have work to do, you don't have to. I can manage."

"I don't have anything to do," Nathaniel breathed and let go of Lysander only to sling his arm over his shoulder. "To tell you the truth, I was napping," he admitted sheepishly.

"Here? That sounds uncomfortable." Lysander blinked dubiously.

"Oh no, it's great. It's nice and quiet. And that's more than I can ask for at my house."

Nathaniel tried his best to distract Lysander from his injury throughout the entire slow, tedious trip. He brought up a series of random, neutral topics like food and weekend plans, and upcoming class projects. It seemed to work to some extent, as Lysander was smiling by the time they reached his apartment building. Nathaniel hoped it did.

.

Lysander eventually paid him a similar kindness.

Nathaniel hissed between his teeth as he jerked the staple out of his palm, an eager gush of blood happily squirting out to greet him. Damn. He was careless. Then again, perhaps he could blame a little bit of that on Melody for dividing his attention.

"Oh my gosh!" She gasped, small hands flying to her face and cerulean orbs widening as she gawked. "You stapled yourself!"

Such a keen observer, wasn't she? What a catch. Nathaniel should've gone out with her when he had the chance. "Yep."

"Are you okay?!"

"I'm going to get a bandaid from the nurse's office." He quickly shuffled from the room before she could offer to join him.

The school nurse was at her desk, unwrapped sandwich in hand.

"Hello," he chirped politely. "Can I have a bandaid?"

She tilted her head and then pointed a saber like fingernail at the sandwich. "I'm on my lunch break."

Of all the members of the staff, this was the one person who didn't like him. She didn't really like anyone, but Nathaniel still felt some sense of failure in this regard. After all, he normally had no trouble whatsoever getting teachers to like him.

"Well...I'm bleeding," he tried awkwardly.

"Here's what you do, kid. Stop bleeding, and start up again when I'm off my lunch break."

Alright. This was fruitless. Nathaniel simply dipped his head and wheeled from the room. In doing so, he nearly collided with the most irritating creature to ever grace the hallway.

"Watch it," Castiel growled, stepping back.

"You watch it," he retorted in vexation. And then he noticed Lysander was accompanying the redhead and lifted his hand in an amiable wave. "Hi, Lysander."

"Hell— Oh! You're bleeding!" Bicolored orbs flashed alertly.

"Err, yeah." Nathaniel sheepishly lowered his hand. "I had an accident with the stapler."

Castiel snickered, an infernal smirk curling the corners of his mouth. "What kind of dumbass staples his own hand?"

"What kind of dumbass skips a week of school just because some girl hurt his feelings?" he retaliated cooly.

Pointedly ignoring their argument, Lysander untied his cravat and wordlessly stepped between them. He took Nathaniel's injured hand and gently wrapped it in the persian-green fabric, tying it off with a neat little bow. "There. That's better, wouldn't you say so?" He offered the blonde a subtle smile.

"Uhh..." Nathaniel's complexion instantly went from fair to beet. His eyes shifted from the the makeshift bandage back to the genial Lysander, wavering self-consciously. "I...Thanks. But it will get stained."

"I have another one. Be more careful with the stapler, okay Nathaniel?" Lysander patted him on the shoulder and carried on down the hallway.

Castiel's mouth opened mutely. He shot Nathaniel a glare that was almost distinctly possessive and followed his friend. Nathaniel glanced down and idly fingered the material. What a considerate gesture. He smiled a secret, jovial smile to himself and sauntered back to the student council room.

.

It occurred to Nathaniel that he was being creepy.

He stretched out flat on his bed, Lysander's cravat in his fist, though it'd been already been a week. It wasn't too damaged, the bloodstain was only about the size of a toothpick, so Nathaniel felt like he should give it back. And given that there was a stain, small or not, he felt like he should wash it first. But Nathaniel didn't want to wash it...Because it smelled like Lysander.

Woven into the fabric was that appealing, Lysandery scent of anise and black pepper. Nathaniel adored it almost as much as he adored the aroma of the library, and even as he thought about it, he absently lifted the fabric to nose and inhaled.

Which was, obviously, a very creepy thing to do. And was all the more creepy, considering he'd been sleeping with it under his pillow for five days now. Oh well. No time to sit here and dwell on his obscene streak of creepiness, he had get ready for school.

He sought out Lysander once there and simply held out the cravat (he'd folded it, stained side down), lips courteously tipping upward. "This is yours. I didn't wash it, sorry. I didn't know what kind of detergent to use." It must've been the most pitiful excuse that ever left his tongue.

Lysander blinked and just looked at it blankly for a moment, seemingly delayed, distracted, or perhaps just dubious before some form of alert flickered though his visage. "Oh. Thank you, Nathaniel." He took it with those oddly beautiful fingers of his and tucked it into a pocket. "Although, you didn't have to give it back."

"I know you have more," Nathaniel replied needlessly, eyes on the cravat that Lysander currently wore, more of a minty green in color. "I just thought you might want it back. Anyway, they're nice. Does your brother make them?"

"He does."

"The stitching is very precise." He knew nothing about stitching whatsoever. He just didn't want the conversation to end.

"Indeed. Leigh excels at his passion. I'm quite proud of him." Lysander smiled upon admission, dimples so endearingly candid. Nathaniel could see a million different curvatures of that smile and never tire of it.

"I'm sure." He _should_ be able to say something more than that, there should be an infinite number of sentences stringing together in his head and falling into his larynx, but there's nothing.

"I suppose I should get to class," Lysander breathed. He offered a nod and started to walk away.

"Wait," said Nathaniel, jigging forward a few steps and barely knowing what he was suggesting. "After school, I'm going to go feed some stray cats that live a few streets away. Do you want to come with me?"

"Why not?"

.

"Normally I only give them dry food, but occasionally I treat them," Nathaniel explained as he crouched down and shrugged his backpack off. Inside, there were several cans of tuna, one manual can opener, and one small, half-filled bag of dry cat food. "I always leave the bowls here, unless they need to be washed."

Stray cats were already flocking to his familiar presence, meowing greetings, climbing atop him or nuzzling his legs. Nathaniel gingerly stroked and patted them and scratched them under their chins.

"I see," replied Lysander, chuckling as a mottled kitten climbed over his knee, tiny fuzzy tail sticking out. "It's really nice of you to take time to feed them like this. Most people chase them away with brooms or dial for Animal Control."

"Yeah. One lady who lives nearby yelled at me for feeding them once." Nathaniel started working off the top of one can, shaking his head. "It's a little heartless if you ask me. The cats live out here without any definite shelter all year round and have to avoid all sorts of hazards, and the people gripe about tipped over garbage cans or cats going in their gardens."

"Never mind the fact that they get into the garbage for food, or that they can help fertilize plants." Lysander shook his head and rubbed a tabby tomcat's belly as he rolled over on the cement, paws in the air and purr rumbling. "It's a shame how negative and selfish people can be."

Nathaniel breathed his agreement as he dumped the first can into a plastic bowl and went on to getting the top off the next one.

"Can I help you with that?"

"I only have one can opener. But you could start filling the other bowls with dry food, if you want."

"Gladly."

Nathaniel handed him the bag and Lysander did so with a languor comportment he awed in an evocative sense. The way one treasures old photographs that don't belong to them, or carefully runs their fingers over wrinkled paper. How he managed to stay refined even when he was doing something like pouring cat food, Nathaniel didn't know. Lysander seemed to notice he was watching, but he said nothing about it. Just smiled a smile of the private kind that Nathaniel should let him keep to himself, but looked at anyway because it was wonderful.

They left when the bowls were full with the kitties happily chowing away.

"I'll bring my own can opener next time," Lysander murmured out of the blue on the way back.

Nathaniel was so stunned by the unprompted declaration that there would be a _next time_ he forgot to remind Lysander that he didn't usually treat the cats to tuna.

.

So it was Valentine's Day. Nathaniel wasn't a fan of the holiday, really. He found it to be sickly contrived, overrated and glorified on a sugared pedestal it was hardly deserving of. Valentine's Day meant more work for him in correcting the students who seemed to think the holiday was a free pass to ignore the PDA regulations and in making sure the multitude of flower petals, chocolate wrappers, and forgotten cards got cleaned up from the floor.

He didn't usually participate in it. But sometimes people were worth making exceptions, Nathaniel knew. He mused over this as he looked at the small box of chocolate resting in his palm. He hoped he wasn't overdoing it. He wasn't, right? There were only three chocolates in the box. And the box itself was nothing special, it wasn't dotted with hearts or even labeled as Valentine's Day chocolate, just plain yellow.

That couldn't be overdoing it.

Even so, he hesitated to present it to Lysander. He just felt shy, to put it bluntly. A little silly too. After all, only girls gave out chocolate on Valentine's Day, right?

So after much deliberation...Nathaniel just set the chocolate down on a desk and resumed his daily student council duties. He tried to focus on work and forget about it completely, but the knowledge that it existed was a nagging needle in the back of his mind. He thought that maybe he should just throw it in the trash, discard it for good so he couldn't even consider changing his mind.

But that would be a waste of perfectly good chocolate. Sure, Nathaniel didn't like chocolate, but he did pay for it already, so maybe he should just give it to someone else. Though being what day it was, that person could very well take it the wrong way and—

"Nathaniel?"

Nathaniel looked up, startled. He'd been so consumed by this mundanely severe dilemma, he hadn't even noticed when Lysander of all people walked in.

"Hey," Nathaniel greeted sheepishly. "Do you need help with something?"

"No, I just wanted to give you this." He smiled pleasantly and held out a fresh green apple.

"An apple?" Nathaniel questioned aloud, accepting with bemusement.

"I'm aware you aren't fond of the sweets people normally give out today, so I improvised." A soft orchid color unfurled in his cheeks.

Oh. Oh! Nathaniel laughed a little in elation and grinned. "Thank you! I can't believe you remembered that."

"I didn't exactly," Lysander admitted with a twinge of embarrassment. "I wrote it down."

Nathaniel smothered his chuckles out of politeness. "I have something for you too." He picked the small box up from the desk and put it in Lysander's grasp. "I hope you like chocolate...I, um, probably should've asked first."

Lysander cupped the gift in a way similar to how he caressed his notebook. "I do like it, thank you, Nathaniel." And then he took just one step closer and pressed lips like floccus to Nathaniel's cheek. His bangs tickled the skin as he moved back again, eyes as warm as toasted marshmallows as they met Nathaniel's widened pair. "Forgive me, that was a bit too forward."

Nathaniel forgave him with an eager kiss on the mouth.

He'd been waiting to do that for awhile, really.

.

Lysander had an amazing singing voice. It was as rich as vicuna velvet and as intrinsic as low tides lapping at the shore. But as much as Nathaniel loved his singing, he thought he liked some of the other sounds Lysander made just a fraction more.

Like his laughter. But not just his laughter, the kind Lysander revealed to him when they were alone in his bedroom and Nathaniel's kisses were getting lower and lower down his bare torso and his mouth just happened to graze the right spot.

A series of blissful, buoyant sounds trembled out of Lysander's lips like the flutter of dragonfly wings. "That tickles," he exclaimed, clearly unprepared for the sensation and unable to collect himself.

Nathaniel paused for a moment and just listened to how lovely— how plainly_ happy_ and spontaneous Lysander's laughter was. He smiled and kept going, trailing his lips down the dip of his navel and to the flat of his stomach. Lysander's laugher abruptly morphed into a breathless gasp, just as delightful.

"Do you want me to keep going?" Nathaniel simpered, golden orbs flashing up to him.

"Yes."

So keep going, he did.

* * *

**I feel like I should apologize for the very existence of this level of mediocrity e_e' **


End file.
